


Helping

by marryingthebed



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-07
Updated: 2013-01-07
Packaged: 2017-11-24 00:32:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,040
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/628254
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/marryingthebed/pseuds/marryingthebed
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It wasn’t how he imagined their first kiss.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Helping

He kissed her, and he told himself it was to keep her quiet.

It wasn’t how he imagined their first kiss to be (not that he had ever imagined their first kiss, not that there was even a  _their_  to think of, just him and Arya, two completely separate people), him with two fingers inside of her and her whimpering loud enough to wake whoever was sleeping in the next room over.

He was helping her, he swore he was. Just helping, nothing else. He’d found her curled in on herself a few weeks before, fingers clumsily fumbling underneath her skirts. And so he’d  _helped_ , covering those fingers with his own, just to let the both of them get some sleep. 

She was seventeen, he told himself, and seventeen-year-olds could never tell what they wanted, so he was helping her, wasn’t he? Helping her find that one spot that made her gasp, helping her get to bed earlier. 

And teaching her how to kiss, he learned, her lips warm and chapped and awkward against his own. So he helped her, thankful for all the lessons given to him by kitchen maids and servant girls and that one whore on his own seventeenth name day. 

(He tried not to think of how little he minded her clumsiness, how he found it sweet, and once, just once he swore, he’d licked her off his fingers, and found that even sweeter.)

(He tried not to think of how often he wished her fingers would help him, too.)

( _Seventeen_ , he told himself, was far too young, just like fifteen had been far too young, and thirteen, and twelve, and every other age she’d been near him, and even when she’d left.)

That night, instead of turning away and slipping onto her own cot, she curled up against him, burying her nose in his neck so that he felt her breath the whole night, and could barely sleep with the idea of him watching over her. 

They never spoke of it, and for the most part their eyes never met when they spoke of other, innocent things, like how far they had travelled and whether or not the next inn would have featherbeds.

(The inns never had featherbeds, but he never minded, and he never heard her complain, either. They were not the sort who needed such things, he thought to himself.)

“Did you ever take a girl, Gendry?” she asked him one day, her voice light and curious.

He near spat out whatever he’d been drinking. “That’s no business of yours, m’lady.”

She opened her mouth as if to say something, then closed it again.

(Later that night, when she didn’t come to him clutching her stomach, he imagined her saying  _What if I wanted it to be?_  and reaching over and kissing him again, the two of them helping each other.)

(He hated the nights she didn’t need him.)

(He hated her, sometimes, for letting her hair get so long and biting her lip and telling him that whatever was inside of her, whatever demanded his fingers,  _hurt_ , in a way nothing had ever hurt before.)

(He liked thinking there was something inside her that demanded his fingers, though he would have to be very drunk to admit it.)

And then one night they could only afford one cot.

He’d offered to take the floor, but she’d snapped at him, calling him stupid and saying the cot was plenty big and she was plenty small, and it wasn’t as if they hadn’t slept in close quarters before. That was what she’d said,  _close quarters_ , like his arms hadn’t been around her waist, her breath warm on his neck. 

It’d been a hard day of riding, and she’d fallen asleep first, sprawled across their cot (not  _their_  cot, he thought, the cot that had been paid for with her money, the cot that she was letting him sleep on simply because she was kind and they’d been friends,  _friends_ , for what felt like a long time.)

(Although he’d never had a friend like this.)

He waited for as long as he could, hoping that she’d turn over in her sleep and grant him some room. But all she did was mumble a few times and smile, sweeter than she’d ever smiled in real life, and turn onto her stomach in such a way that he knew her hair would be messy in the morning. 

Eventually he’d sat on the cot, hoping to wake her up, and edged his way under the blankets, already warm and smelling of her. She moved to make room quickly enough, but as soon as he’d pulled the blankets over himself she’d turned back over again, so that they were pressed up against each other, his nose in her hair. He turned away, lying on his side and facing away from her, but she was still so close that it took him even longer to fall asleep.

The next morning brought a headache and the realization that he’d turned over again in his sleep and his arm was now draped over her waist.

He saw her eyes open, still hazy with sleep, and then she’d blinked and giggled and whispered “Gendry.”

“Hmm?”

“You’re  _hard_.” This was followed by more giggling, and he’d blushed as he’d realized it was true.

“I-it j-just happens, all right? Most mornings….”

“Oh.” He must’ve been about to go mad, because for a moment he thought she sounded disappointed.

“I-i better go, um, take care of it,” he mumbled, moving to get up, but her hand wrapped around his wrist, her fingers suddenly seeming so small.

She bit her lip, hard, and said, studying his chin, his nose, his left ear, anywhere but his eyes, “I could….help you too, you know. If you wanted. I mean, it would just be—”

The first thing to come out of his mouth was wrong. “I don’t want your  _help_ , Arya.”

And that noise again, that little “oh.” “Then what do you want?”

So he kissed her, unable to explain what he wanted, except that it was more than just assistance. 

And she kissed him back.

And they didn’t help each other, not any more. They didn’t need to.


End file.
